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"id": 213363,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Kosgey",
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"speaker": {
"id": 177,
"legal_name": "Henry Kiprono Kosgey",
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"content": "I have a single stream school in my constituency which has an enrolment of 169. It means that it is a fully enroled single stream school, but with only one Teachers Service Commission (TSC) teacher. How do you expect those students to learn and compete with those from well equipped, well staffed and well housed schools? So, as we talk about equality--- The question of equity must be looked into and seriously addressed. Even in secondary schools, we have national schools which are well equipped, well staffed and have everything. Some are even overstaffed. But those schools do not number more than 20. Then, we have provincial schools which are like national schools, but they are slightly different. Those schools number about a few hundreds. Then, we have close to over 3,000 district schools. That is where the majority of Kenyan children are. The ordinary wananchi's children are in those district schools. Close to over 900,000 children are in those schools. But they are poorly equipped, poorly staffed and poorly housed. Yet, we are talking about providing equal opportunity to all children. It is not fair to talk about equal opportunities, when more than three quarters of the children in this country are not properly being taught. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I also want to touch on the quality of education at the university level. All of us now know that lecture rooms at the universities are full. There are lecture rooms containing over 400, 500 and even 1000 students. Those cannot be considered as lecture theatres or lecture rooms. Those are, maybe, public barazas . I see Mr. Munya is smiling because he used to teach in those public barazas . Our universities are also supposed to do research, as one of their primary functions. I see the allocation to the universities has remained the same. I think the University of Nairobi has always been allocated Kshs3.3 billion for very many years. I even see that in the forward planning, there is no intention to increase that amount. So, what do our universities do? They go and recruit those parallel degree students. They fill up the classrooms and lower the quality of education. That way, they rake in some money in order to survive. In doing so, they forget research and quality. Those universities - because some of us went to those universities - are devaluing our degrees. Tomorrow, if I went to the University of Nairobi, I would say that I came from the University of Nairobi, and yet the quality has gone down. So, everybody will assume that the education that I received is the same as the one they are receiving. That is what is coming out from the market. I feel something should be done. With regard to opening of campuses, you find that a university like Moi University has a campus in Athi River, Mt. Elgon and Mt. Kenya. I really do not know how that can be done. I think even though the universities are autonomous, where matters of policy are concerned, the Ministry 2620 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES July 18, 2007 should look into that and make sure that we do not have a campus in every village. If there is a need to provide university education around Nairobi, universities around Nairobi can do that. Those ones around Eldoret can provide university courses around Eldoret and so forth. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Minister alluded to Vision 2030. We have not seen Vision 2030! Is it available in writing? Has it been tabled in this House? Where is Vision 2030? We want to read it. What does it say about education? We also need to harmonise the various policies, so that we do not talk about Vision 2030, Kenya Education Sector Support Programme, Ten-Year Programme and then the Millennium Development Goal (MDGs) of 2015. The Education for All Initiative is talking about 2015 and so forth. So, there is no clear policy. There is no clear policy pursued by the Ministry of Education. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, because of time, let me touch on financing of education again, particularly about secondary education. The Minister mentioned that the Ministry will provide Kshs3,000 as tuition fees. I think the problem here is that certain schools in Kenya charge exorbitantly high fees, up to Kshs70,000. So, if you are going to provide Kshs3,000, while the fees required is Kshs70,000, is that really of any help? For the information of the Minister, we in ODM(K) will provide free secondary education."
}